The owners of the City Club Apartments in Downtown are planning a new mixed-used development in the former Union Central Life Insurance Co. building on the southwest corner of Fourth and Vine streets.

Michigan-based City Club Apartments LLC is seeking $5 million in Ohio historic preservation tax credits to help finance the project, with a total price tag of just under $103 million, according to documents obtained from the Ohio Development Services Agency.

According to its tax credit application, City Club wants to renovate the 31-story, 340,000 -square-foot building, now known as the Fourth and Vine Tower, into a residential and commercial complex that would house about 400 residents in 262 apartment units.

The first and second floors of the building with the distinctive pyramid-shaped roof on top of the tower would be renovated for commercial tenants, and possibly a fitness center.

No tenants have been secured, but City Club is already in discussions with potential occupants.

"We are currently exploring apartments, retail, services and amenities in an effort to bring to Cincinnati the type of mixed-use development found in other vibrant urban environments in the US and around the world,'' Jonathan Holtzman, City Club's chairman and CEO, said in a statement.

Holtzman said the new project would be integrated with the City Club Apartments, which opened last spring at 309 Vine St., just south of the tower.

The 294-unit City Club Apartments building is about 75 percent occupied, and features 45,000 square feet of office space, plus retail and restaurant space.

City Club officials said they would soon be announcing a new rooftop restaurant and are close to finalizing an office tenant deal.

The new project could get started as early as February if all the financing is in place.

City Club will find out by early December whether it has been approved for the state historic tax credits, which it said are necessary for the project to proceed.

The project would revitalize an iconic Downtown landmark that was once the fifth-tallest building in the world when it was built in 1913.